Assessment of Bridge Resilience Efficiency Using Data Envelopment Analysis

Abstract

The assessment of resilience for bridges draws ample attention from bridge engineering and management community in recent years. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches are used to assess the resilience of the bridge. However, these approaches can be biased if they obtain bridge resilience scores without considering some essential variables such as age, design high flood level (HFL), and finish road level (FRL) of the bridge. Therefore, this study presents a methodology to measure the resilience efficiency of bridges using the data envelopment analysis (DEA). It computes the resilience efficiency of 12 bridges that are located across the Tapi river in Surat (India). For input and output variables of DEA model, variables like age, design high flood level (HFL), finish road level (FRL), and resilience score of the bridges are selected. Efficiency score was measured using a variable return to scale with an output-orientated Banker-Charnes-Cooper (BCC) formulation. A total of seven bridges out of twelve were observed inefficient as per this study. A sensitivity analysis is carried out to check the reliability of DEA model. Eventually, the finding of the study can be helpful to bridge owners for prioritizing the inefficient bridges to improve their resilience score.